A new government report detailing Germany’s failure to cut emissions increases pressure on the country’s coal commission to agree on a speedy phase-out plan. Its members enter a critical stage this week as they focus on tangible proposals. EURACTIV’s media partner Clean Energy Wire reports.

The European Parliament voted on Tuesday (13 November) a set of three clean energy laws for 2030, including binding targets for renewable energies, an indicative objective on energy savings and a separate text on the governance of the Energy Union.

Whether humankind fails or succeeds in keeping the rise in global temperatures within manageable levels, central banks will sooner or later be called upon to act, said Benoît Cœuré, a member of the European Central Bank's (ECB) Executive Board.

The EU's next multi-annual budget (2021-2027) should dedicate 40% of spending to the low-carbon economy and high-quality jobs, said Rudy de Leeuw, a delegate at the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC), an EU advisory body.

The new Corporate Reporting Dialogue project will work on aligning international standards with the recommendations published by the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosure in a bid to improve and harmonise reporting on sustainability standards, the group announced Wednesday (7 November).

The European Commission is preparing to launch a “risk data hub” in the coming months that will help map out loss and damage from natural disasters such as floods, droughts, storms and other extreme weather events that are becoming more frequent with climate change.

Five weeks before a pivotal UN climate conference (COP24) starts, a group of investors led, by the Church of England Pensions Board and Swedish national pension fund AP7, sent a letter to 55 companies to challenge them on climate lobbying.

Only sixteen countries out of the 197 that have signed the Paris Agreement have defined national climate action plan ambitious enough to meet their pledges, according to a policy brief released on Monday (29 October), ahead of the crucial UN climate conference COP24 in Katowice (Poland) in December.

While COP24 president-designate Michał Kurtyka continues his intense climate diplomatic trail after end of pre-COP24 session 24 October in Polish Krakow showed uneven progress being made across the various negotiation tracks, the pro-coal position of Poland’s energy ministry throws sand into the process.

Climate change is increasing the risk of extreme weather events, including droughts, flooding, hurricanes, earthquakes and wildfires. In 2017, costs were estimated to be $306 billion, which is almost double 2016’s loss of $188 billion.

Poles vote in local elections on Sunday (21 October), seen as a key test for the country’s nationalist governing party. Until very recently, energy transition was a political no-go in the coal-dependent country but the situation is evolving, a climate activist and Green local politician in the COP24 host city of Katowice told EURACTIV.com.

Unlike the energy sector, agriculture does not benefit from public policies geared towards a low carbon transition, which means farming is still a significant contributor to climate change due to meat over-consumption, a new report published on 16 October revealed.

Climate change has been described as one of the biggest global threats of the 21st century. Dimitris Dimitriadis explains what the European Union needs to do to improve its civil protection capacities.

To succeed in renovating the European building stock by 2050, all the governance levels need to be involved, from local to national, French MP Marjolaine Meynier-Millefert told EURACTIV, adding that people who cannot afford the costs of renovation must not be left behind.

One of Europe's most influential business lobbies is trying to push the EU towards climate action standstill, after a leaked memo obtained by EURACTIV called the bloc’s existing 40% emissions reduction target "already ambitious".

The European Commission has given up plans to ramp up Europe's 40% emissions reduction goal for 2030 to 45%, according to German media. But the EU executive insists that a formal increase was never on the table.

The planet lost a third of its wetlands between 1970 and 2015. Moreover, this decline has been accelerating since the beginning of the century due to urbanisation, agriculture and climate change. This was the Ramsar Convention’s warning in a report published on 27 September. EURACTIV France’s media partner, the Journal de l’environnement, reports.

A group of 19 countries officially launched the Carbon Neutrality Coalition in New York on Thursday (27 September), just weeks before the European Commission is expected to publish a document outlining policy scenarios to reach carbon neutrality by 2050.

With the European Commission expected to present its mid-century climate plan in November, a report released on Thursday (27 September) shows net zero emissions can only be achieved by 2050 if member states develop more innovative, cross-sectoral, and 'beyond business-as-usual' scenarios.

Ahead of Germany’s coal commission meeting on Tuesday (18 September), one of its members explained to EURACTIV what is behind the meaning of ‘structural economic change’, which the newly appointed institution has to deal with.